The Brooklyn Nets pulled off the biggest blockbuster of at least the past few seasons when they traded for James Harden in January. They gave up Caris LeVert, Jarrett Allen and a host of draft assets in exchange for a legitimate superstar in Harden.
In acquiring him, the Nets hoped to add him to their own superstar duo of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, but the NBA’s injury gods had other things in store. Durant ended up missing 23 straight games with a hamstring injury between the middle of February and the beginning of April and has been in and out of the lineup as he ramps up for the NBA playoffs.
James Harden’s season was hampered by uncharacteristic injuries, but next season is a new chapter for the Brooklyn Nets star. Can he win the 2021-22 MVP?
Harden carried the Nets on his back while Durant was out. In the games Harden and Irving played without Durant, the Nets went an incredible 19-2, catapulting them into their current standing of second in the Eastern Conference with a record of 45-24.
Shortly before James Harden went out with his own hamstring strain, he was generating some genuine MVP buzz. Thanks to the bizarre nature of the season with Durant, LeBron James and other candidates missing scads of time, Nikola Jokic went from a heavy favorite to win the award to a runaway near-certain victor.
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Harden’s own candidacy was short-lived and never all that serious, but it does lead to questions about whether he could make a more convincing run for it next season.
For starters, a big reason that his candidacy gained traction was that the Nets were winning in such massive quantities without their supposed best player, Kevin Durant. It took the “too much help” narrative and flipped it on its head. However, one would assume that next season Durant will be certainly no less available than this season, at the very least, and that’s going to hamper his case.
With three superstars on the same team, it can be hard to differentiate which player is even the best on their own team, or most valuable to their own team, let alone to make the case that somehow that player should be the league’s most valuable player.
Harden has been willing to play whichever role that is required of him this season with the Nets, and while that makes him an ideal superstar teammate, it doesn’t make for a bonafide MVP campaign.
It’s going to take one or more of the following things to provide him a path to MVP next season:
- James Harden has the highest usage on the team by far, with career-best numbers
- Kyrie Irving and/or Kevin Durant miss large chunks of the season
- The Nets win so many games (with huge numbers from Harden) that he becomes an undeniably heavy favorite
In addition, while the Brooklyn Nets winning the championship would go a long way, it also wouldn’t hurt if Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks do not win the NBA championship this season. While he’s putting up numbers very reminiscent of his past two MVP seasons, he’s been a victim of voter fatigue perhaps in large part because voters do feel burned by his inability to make deep playoff runs.
If Giannis is able to win this year’s championship with the Bucks, expect voters to get back on his bandwagon in a huge way next season.
So, it’s not an impossible path for James Harden to win the 2021-22 MVP award, but it requires a lot of things to break just right.